Project Gutenberg's Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships, by W.H.G. Kingston

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Title: Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships
A Story of the Last Naval War

Author: W.H.G. Kingston

Illustrator: T. Hoggans

Release Date: May 8, 2007 [EBook #21389]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RONALD MORTON, OR THE FIRE SHIPS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships; A Story of the Last Naval War, by
W.H.G. Kingston.

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This is quite a difficult book to get the gist of. It is a tale of
inheritance. A family inhabiting a castle in Shetland, a group of
islands to the north of Scotland, is also apparently entitled to a title
and lands in Spain and elsewhere. But who of the Shetland family is the
rightful heir? The Spanish usurpers are well aware that the true heir
is in Shetland, and their agent is a priest who appears several times in
the book.

Apart from all this there is a background of seamanship and sailing
vessels, for the time is just after the Napoleonic War with France.
This of course is the setting in which Kingston excels as an author.

You will probably need a pencil and paper when you are working out who
Ronald Morton really is, but the story is a fascinating one, and you
will enjoy the task. It's about fourteen hours as an audiobook.

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RONALD MORTON, OR THE FIRE SHIPS, A STORY OF THE LAST NAVAL WAR, BY
W.H.G. KINGSTON.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE SPANISH MAN-OF-WAR OFF SHETLAND--A CALM--THE "SAINT CECILIA" IN
DANGER--THE PILOT--BRASSAY SOUND.

"Land! land on the larboard bow!" The cry was uttered in a foreign
tongue from the masthead of a corvette of twenty guns, a beautiful long,
low, flush-decked craft with dark hull, taunt raking masts, and square
yards, which, under all the sails she could carry with a southerly
breeze right aft, was gliding rapidly over the now smooth surface of the
northern ocean. The haughty flag of old Spain, and the language spoken
on board, showed that she belonged to that n